Enlightenment Vaporized Out of My Head

The biggest hindrance to being enlightened isn’t obtaining enlightenment itself. As it’s said with making money, the hard part is keeping it. As soon as you leave your chosen enlightenment seminar or retreat back to the “real world”, any spark of enlightenment is vaporized out of you by unavoidable tyrannical bosses (and EVERYONE has a boss), pompous experts, frustrated jerks, and unethical posers.

So the SBAR objectives of this post, the 2nd in the series on the Root of Dukkha, are:

Situation – The hope to be at peace in a world founded upon competition is almost futile. It’s “survival of the fittest” at every level of Life On Earth itself to the human-constructed organization where we earn our income to survive.

Background – The World is in constant change and for Life on Earth to continue, everything living in it must be capable of thriving at any particular point. Such a capability requires a mechanism to adapt to the change. That mechanism, evolution, requires the ability to generate competitors with a mixed array of capabilities, an arena for them to compete, and a force fueling them to fight.

Assessment – The solution can’t be arrived at through normal everyday life thinking. If we could eradicate Pride in ourselves and accept it in others, it will remove the friction of dukkha, which means we can focus on the Now, much more powerfully than if our focus is diluted into the past and future.

Recommendation – See that Pride, the Zeus of the Seven Deadly Sins, is a relic from our low-sentience past that served us well then, but today makes us miserable. Today, it serves as leashes tying us to things others want us to cling to.

Maybe then, instead of taking ten steps forward and nine steps back after each retreat, we can take only one or two steps back.

Prideful are Fearful

Pride is deodorant for fear, simply masking it. Everyone who is prideful is covering fear. And what is fear? Fear is the threat of losing something. Originally, during humanity’s low-sentience past, this pretty much meant our lives to a predator. But more generally, it’s the threat of losing anything we cling to, and in our higher-sentience present, that means quite a few things.

As with envy, there was a time that pride was simply a heuristic that got us through daunting challenges during our simpler-minded days. It’s what gave us the audacity to go up against animals much larger and stronger than us, both to defend ourselves and to kill for food. I wrote of genuine fearlessness in a prior post. Fear is a simple mechanism by which low-sentience creatures engage in “deciding” to escape danger or stand their ground – “flight or fight”.

I say “flight or fight” as opposed the usually ordered “fight or flight” because for humans in society, it’s usually better to just flee the situation first, giving us some time to think through the problem from a distance. A heuristic is just a rule-of-thumb to use if we don’t have time to think through thoughtfully. It’s not an answer across all cases, just a quick and dirty first guess to buy time to make a better guess.

So here is a new heuristic one can follow: Prideful are Fearful.

Pride is the sin to which the other six of the seven deadly sins bow. It’s the antidote to fear, the biggest thing debilitating our human efforts. Just as it’s sometimes easier to douse ourselves with deodorant than to take a bath, it’s easier to mask our fear with pride than to strive for genuine fearlessness by having nothing to fear. Genuine Fearlessness is clinging to nothing, having no buttons to push.

My favorite statement addressing the need to eradicate pride comes from Carlos Castaneda’s character, don Juan. To which pride is referred to as “self-importance”:

“… what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.” – Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within.

Pride and Power

“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:23-24

Everyone knows this verse from the New Testament expressing the near impossibility for rich people to get into Heaven. We non-rich, non-powerful people then kind of ironically take pride in knowing that in the end we will win.

But I want to make this absolutely clear: This post is by no means a hit piece on the rich and powerful. Looking down on the powerful is as inappropriate as looking down on a homeless person, passive-aggressively pitying them, “Oh those poor rich people …” They play a part that’s as much a part of the world as anything else. This is no different from the role of lions, tigers, and wolves in the ecosystem.

The World is a Yin and Yang of lions and gazelle. Usually, there is some level of imbalance in all things, including the number of lions versus gazelle. That imbalance is restored by nature through the drama of this incredible mechanism called life. In non-duality terms, it’s not just that “there is no me” who is separate from the Universe, but everything else is as much a part of what is.

The powerful – executives, politicians, judges, the rich – naturally require the gall to think that they can lead many independently intelligent people. How could any leader lead if they didn’t have the confidence to think they could? And that confidence comes from pride in their accomplishments – which is the source of their power, and so the thing that their pride protects.

But pride also exists in the schoolyard bully, experts of all sorts, the beautiful people – even the “working man” takes pride in doing “real work”. Pride is in fact the “Me”, the Ego. Remember the new heuristic, Prideful are Fearful. Every single prideful person, rich or not-rich, is scared underneath. And that is no matter how confident and happy they may appear – just about every creature, predator or prey, has a very good level of skill with camouflage.

The key to a dukkha-free life is to stop clinging. By definition, the prideful are clinging in big ways. If one is fortunate enough to be wealthy, whether by inheritance or very hard work with a lot of luck, until they fall they will not have been forced to face the challenge for Enlightenment.

For the prideful, it matters what others think. It’s very hard to change peoples’ minds just as you cannot make a lion stalking you unhungry. It’s the foundation for a very dukkha-filled life. This post is not a matter of changing the world or peoples’ minds. The World is what it is. It’s about eradicating Pride within you and accepting the Pride of others, enabling you to place all your focus on Now. When you become nothing (you lose your Pride) you become everything (you are One with the Universe).

How Does a Snowball Stand a Chance in Hell?

Continuing the Scripture above from Matthew 19:23-24:

… When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:25-26

The part, “but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) means that there is no way to solve the conundrum of being enlightened in a daily world to which we really no longer belong, at least within the context of our normal way of thinking. Enlightenment comes with a completely different set of rules. There is the way of people and the way of the Universe.

All of us have had flashes of enlightenment on vacation or a retreat. When it seems like things can’t get worse and it does – and all you can do is say, “Hey, What the F***.” You are at that moment enlightened, you’ve dropped that big bag of crap you’ve been hoarding and hauling around all these years.

But the problem is vacation ends, and your enlightenment will probably slowly or quickly vaporize out of you. The vast majority of us must make our living in a system where everyone – you, your bosses, your underlings, your customers – are driven to strive in a perpetual escalating cycle of goals. A cycle that seems to have this life of its own, never satisfied, escalating with no other apparent reason but to fulfill someone’s greed – the subject of another post in this series.

This “cycle of obtaining goals” is no more or less “cruel”, unworthy, or senseless than the “circle of Life” where every creature survives by devouring another creature. Life on Earth, the circle of life, only seems sadistic from our little human animal point of view. But from a higher perspective, the beauty of the mechanism is what made Life on Earth virtually immortal – three billion years and still going strong, suffering much greater assaults than what we puny humans can toss at it. Can we say something similar about the “cycle of obtaining goals”?

The Way of the Universe

Pu’u o Mahuka Heiau. That ti plant told me his name is Mr. Ti.

So what do we do when we find peace of mind on vacation at Zion National Park or Tassajara and don’t want to lose it when we get back to work? To be blunt, when it does vaporize so readily, it means we didn’t quite cut all our clinging. There are still leashes that we haven’t cut. We may be “enlightened” in that we know peace is out there, and that in itself is huge. But as Ringo Starr says, “It only takes one line tah reel in a fish.”

Forget the way of people. As crazy as it sounds, drop all ambition at work. Ambitions and goals at work are the clinging, the Dukkha, of the “corporate organism” – Corporate Dukkha. Don’t worry about pleasing your boss, what your co-workers think of you, getting credit, promotions, raises, bonus plans, employee of the month awards. But this does not mean to do poorly at work. On the contrary, in many ways you will work harder – sloth is yet another subject for another post in this series.

It’s all completely senseless. Even if you do more than is expected, chances are someone else has done more and will win the whole pot – sometimes maybe their family life sucks so they have the time to beat you. Some don’t play fair and aren’t ever caught. Even if you’ve figured out some innovative way to get work done faster, the breathing space is immediately filled with more to do. Who is getting richer at their bargain cost of patting you on the head?

If you’re not hungry, not in danger, you’re healthy and can take on whatever the next instant holds. That’s all you need. In fact, beyond people, that’s all any other creature needs. If you are truly honorable, that is, you embrace 100% what is right here, right now, the Universe always provide what you need.

And now again, I want to be perfectly clear:Counter-intuitively, after you’ve checked out of the games, you will actually become a much bigger asset to your employer. Everything you do will be real and not the smoke and mirrors of a bedazzler. Meaning, there is a difference between genuinely effective work and work that has the appearance of effectiveness (lipstick on a pig). They may never know your value, never acknowledge it, but the Enlightened has no appetite for such things anyway.

How will you do this? Giving up all your pride, your self-importance, your ego, you are dukkha-free and that energy is diverted to your engagement with what is. Listen to what they want you to do, and just do it, no resistance. If you think it’s wrong, as a faithful employee, speak once, then forever hold your peace. Is it mind-numbing, soul-sucking work? Hey great! The better to eradicate your energy-draining self-importance.

As I explained in The Compound Interest of Enlightenment, you then apply the saved energy to your Zen Art, which is what you do on the Path of the Enlightened. Notice it is not the path to enlightenment, but the path of the enlightened – those who 100% accept what is, have emptied your cup of all you cling to, and joyfully walk the Path. No thing is as powerful as a Being who is truly One with the Universe.

Absorb everything around you as if your cup is perpetually empty – the Beginner’s Mind. Solve problems without any hoopla or expectation for reward. The worst that will happen is they lay you off because their perception is that you don’t do as much as the bedazzling person. The reality is that if you walk the Path, you are able to find another job very easily. That place that spit you out, bedazzled by the bedazzling, will very soon fall apart without you because they see the flowery illusion, not the reality.

And with all that said, who knows, there is a very good chance your bosses aren’t as bedazzled by the bedazzler as you think. And you may get your bonus, promotion, and all anyway. But you cannot keep that hope in your heart to any degree. This is not a matter of an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on the matter of a goal (getting your bonus or promotion), but faith in the wisdom of being in the Now – God’s will be done.

Yes, we can all have our cake and eat it too, as long as that cake is to be One with the Universe.

The Root of Dukkha – Seven Deadly Sins Series

This post on pride and fear is part of a series looking at Dukkha from the point of view of the seven deadly “sins”.

Last Fall, the Rubber Ducky Buddha of Joliet and I were hiking around Canyonlands. “Is this catcus hiding under this ledge with its weapons deployed fearful?”, asked Rubber Ducky.

I thought about it for a few minutes. With Rubber Ducky, strange questions never have an obvious answer, so you need to deeply ponder his questions. If I blurted out my instinctual answer, I would have answered “Yes”, been wrong, and that would have been the end of the lesson. As Ringo Starr says, “Why plahnt seeds where it cahn’t grow.”

So I prepared the garden of my mind for this lesson. Hmmm … OK … the cactus under the ledge redminded me of “preppers”, tucked away in the mountains living in fortresses they call home, lots of guns and ammo, lots of food. They’re obviously afraid of something. That similarity is probably why I would have blurted out “yes” without pondering the question further.

But the cactus can’t make decisions like the preppers. The cactus are what they are and the preppers are humans with the power of design and choice. What would the nature of a plant living in a dry, hot desert among thirsty, hungry critters be? Well … it would be like the catcus tucked away under the ledge with its thorns. That’s just one solution to that question. Another solution would be to live in an air-conditioned home of a human who thought you were nice thing to have.

I asked Rubber Ducky if this lesson is about eliminating fear, to which he answered with the question, “Why would we want to do that?”

Me: Because fear is debilitating. You go off and hide.

RD: Is that it? Are rock climbers, MMA fighters, and skydivers fearless?

Me: Maybe they are fearless … or better yet, they’re brave enough to face their fears. You can’t deny their courage, whether they actually have something to fear or not.

Rubber Ducky deciding to save us a bunch of time: Here’s the punchline to this lesson: No creature on Earth is fearless. That is, no ant, no dog, no human. It doesn’t make sense to be fearless. Without fear, Life on Earth would fall apart. What if predator and prey did just give up?

Me: I know this one! Predators wouldn’t be able to drive prey to do better and prey wouldn’t be able to drive their predators to do better. They push each other to be better!

RD: Yyyyyes … but what else? So they stop evolving … so … bigger picture … Earth would continue along its merry way over time, orbits changing, axis tilting, continents moving, volcanoes erupting, meteors striking … What would become of Life on Earth, the three billion years old creature in which we’re each like just a cell?

Me minutes later: The Earth continues evolving! But Life on Earth would be like a hermit clinging to his old ways as society around him changes, grows, impinging more and more on his solitude, eventually snuffing him out!

RD: The mechanics involved in this thing you think of as fear is actually fundamental to Zen. It’s the basis of the decision-making process of all creatures. For humans, it is a blown up decision-making mechanism.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

The Eternal Fishnu later taught me that this fear thing started as simple heuristics – simple, quick and dirty, good enough rules. It’s a mechanism that can possibly spontaneously emerge within in a few short billion years. That is, as opposed to human-designed machines that would take way longer to pop up in that way.

Let’s go way back a billion or so years ago to much simpler times, when only single-celled creatures roamed the Earth, and see that the fear thing began as just a binary (Yes or No) rule at a decision point to choose left or right. For example, “sense” more food to the left then move to the left, to the right then move to the right.

For creatures a little smarter, sense a predator to the left then move left, sense a predator to the right then move right.

For even smarter creatures, left or right upgraded into fight or flight. Can I take that bastard? For these creatures that mostly translates to: Is that bastard bigger than me? Yes, then fight. No, then run like hell.

For such non-sentient or low-sentient creatures, such as ants and fish, if they were wrong, they didn’t care because the aren’t aware of their own mortality. All that matters in that some percentage of them live to reproduce so the species – not that individual – survives. Remember, the reality of Life on Earth is that it’s a competition of species, not individuals. It just seems that way to we sentient humans because in a way we each are a species of one.

Complex Answers to Complex Questions

For the not-quite-as-sentient-as-humans-today creatures (such as dogs, apes, or even humans in much simpler times) this decision-making mechanism became much more sophisticated. The increased complexity of life has grown the list of choices to more than a binary decision of fight or flight and the factors to consider that are plugged into our decisions have grown way beyond whether something is bigger or smaller than you.

For these creatures, a new heuristic had to emerge, much more powerful but still rather simple. And that heuristic is: If someone else is doing it, chances are that it’s good. What’s great about this heuristic is that it doesn’t require great intelligence to purposefully come up with better ideas. One lucky individual could simply accidentally stumble upon something that works – and many of the greatest “inventions” are accidental, then it spreads like the plague, only it’s just an idea, not a virus/bacteria. See Mimetic Theory (Mimesis) to dive deeper into this very intriguing notion.

Today, with seven billion people in the world, instant communication, global-scale commerce, “fast-food technology” (everything providing instant gratification), way enough food, there are just too many things for us to copy. How many really neat things are going on out there? So many things to catch our attention because they seem fun, or things we should be doing, or things we should be avoiding. We sentient humans are plagued with desires, all because of this web of competing fears of missing out on multiple things because we have just one body. Our new heuristic has reached its limit, unless we like being pulled in every direction and constantly tortured about what we should be doing. That’s Dukkha to a degree not existent in the Buddha’s time when he thought that was bad!

Genuine Fearlessness

So that’s the rough story of Fear and Dukkha, give or take a few liberties with the facts. For humans today, it’s a relentlessly churning world out there where hiding under a rock ledge with our weapons pointing out isn’t a plausible long-term option. It’s a fine option for the cactus in the photo above because it has no goals, it has no desire to be anything other than what it is and doesn’t know to care about how its life will play out. It just does what it does in real-time response to what is presented.

So what’s the answer? The only genuinely fearless critters are the truly Enlightened. The Enlightened have no fear because they have no goals, yet they play their part – just like the cactus in the photo above. The only real difference between a human and the cactus is that we get to make choices about the part we play, even though we don’t have much say about the script. The cactus can only be a perfect cactus, nothing else. They are 100% accepting of what is now because there is only now, the past and future are just ideas in our heads.

Becoming bigger is the way the unenlightened (that is, almost everyone) tries to deal with fear; richer, bigger, more powerful, more beautiful, more muscular, more talented, bigger car, bigger gun, more whatever than the next guy. It’s just a manifestation of that primal heuristic that is still in us – bigger is stronger. By hoarding these qualities, we believe we’re fortifying our hold on what we cling to, but it’s all just deodorant masking our fear.

You begin by emptying your cup – empty your mind of all that you know. Replace your “NO FEAR” bumper sticker with “no pride” … hahaha. Start with a 7-Day Bodhi Day Season.